Silence Once Begun (4 page)

INT
.

And you didn’t ask him about it?

JIRO

I just said that. I saw him and left.

INT
.

And you had other visits like that?

JIRO

I came every day. Some days they would let me in. Some days they wouldn’t. When they would it was always the same. I would approach the bars from one side, he from another. Neither one of us spoke. It was said there was a room where prisoners received visitors. I never saw that room.

Nineteenth of October, 1977. Oda Sotatsu. Inspector’s name unrecorded.

[
Int. note
. Again, transcript of session recording, possibly altered or shoddily made. Original recording not heard.]

OFFICER 3

Mr. Oda, I have been informed about your case by the inspector you spoke to previously. He declared you unresponsive. It is his opinion that you should simply be run through the system.
Flushed out of the system
. Those were his exact words. Not to be vulgar, but you see what I mean. You are getting a particular reputation around here. I am going to explain something to you. In jail and in prison, even here at a police station, a local police station like this, there are things that people have done that make them what they are. Do you see? I was in the military, I went to school, I was in a training program, after that I joined the force, and I have worked my way up to being an inspector. That is what I am. Those things I did have made me what I am. You, on the other hand. You have done a crime. That is why you are here. What you are is a prisoner. That is what you are. However, what you are does not determine how you are treated, not the way you would think. What determines how you are treated in here is how you behave and how that behavior creates a reputation. I have a reputation for being good to the people I talk to. Then more people talk to me, then more people learn that I am good to
talk to. That is my reputation. There are prisoners here who are treated exceptionally well. Some who have done worse things than others are treated better than the others. Do you know why that is?

ODA

(silent)

OFFICER 3

It is because they have learned how to behave and how to represent a particular reputation, to make it real. You are creating a reputation for yourself. Do you know that?

ODA

(silent)

OFFICER 3

There is a reason you sleep in a concrete cell with no bed, night after night. There is a reason that you get the food that no one else wants. Not all the prisoners get sprayed with a hose. Do you see what I mean? These officers are from good families. They grew up in your town. You may even know them. They have children. They treat people well. But when they see you, they think: here is an animal. Here is a person who wants nothing to do with being human, with being part of our community.

(Officer takes a deep breath, pauses.)

OFFICER 3

What we want is for you to tell us more. The information in the confession is not enough. It is very little. It is almost a useless document, other than where you are concerned. Where you are concerned, it is probably the end of you. But for others, it is useless. We need you to tell us more. Tell us more and we can help you. When I came here, today, and I was told that
I would be the one to speak to you, I had an idea about who you were. There had been talk about you. Also, the newspapers. They have been running stories. Many things about you. So, I had an idea about what you would be like. But you aren’t like that. To me, you look like a regular guy, who ended up in a bad spot. You look like maybe you need to talk to someone. Like maybe all this can be explained somehow. I’m the guy you want to talk to. Think about it.

(Tape recorder clicks off.)

[
Int. note
. To this visit, Mrs. Oda brought a toy that had been Sotatsu’s. It was a long stick painted blue with a red bell on the end. The bell was shaped like a flower. It did not make any noise, Mrs. Oda explained. It had originally been given to Sotatsu’s brother as a present, and he immediately broke it. Sotatsu had found the broken toy and began carrying it around all the time. It became his. He even claimed that he could hear the sound of the bell, although clearly the bell made no sound. Once, the family played a trick on him and hid little bells in their clothing. When he would move the stick, one of the family members would surreptitiously jingle a bell. This caused him great concern and difficulty, and both parents regretted having done it; so said Mrs. Oda. It also confirmed him in his belief that there truly was a sound, and even after their ruse had been explained to him, he disbelieved it.]

INT
.

Your next visit to Sotatsu was some weeks later?

MRS. ODA

One week later. I brought him a blanket, but they wouldn’t let him have it. They said he had all the blankets he needed.

INT
.

He was provided with blankets by the jail?

MRS. ODA

I do not believe so. What they were saying was …

INT
.

That he shouldn’t have a blanket. Or that his sort shouldn’t …

MRS. ODA

I think so. They did let me stand there with the blanket and try to speak with him. I told him that we were all thinking of him, and I tried something that a friend of mine said.

INT
.

What do you mean by that?

MRS. ODA

A friend of mine, an older woman whose opinion I respected greatly. She said to me to do something when I went and I did. I worked it out carefully and did it. What it was was this: I should tell him a memory I had, very clearly and just speak of it, let it all move there by itself without me or the sad time we were in, just by itself, the past moment. So, I had remembered a time that would be good to speak of, that I thought I could do …

INT
.

Did you prepare it ahead of time?

MRS. ODA

Yes, I thought about it a few ways and tried it out. Then when I went I said it to him.

INT
.

Would you want to say it now the way you said it, do you think you could still remember it?

MRS. ODA

Yes. I remember. I actually said it to him several times. He seemed to like it, so when I went there I said it a few times.

INT
.

And could you say it now?

MRS. ODA

I can. Let me think a minute and I will be ready.

INT
.

That’s fine. Do you want me to stop the tape?

MRS. ODA:

Just for a minute.

[
Int. note
. Here I stopped the tape for approximately fifteen minutes while Mrs. Oda went about remembering her words. I got a glass of water for her from the kitchen and found something to do in another room. When I returned, she was ready.]

INT
.

The tape-device is recording.

MRS. ODA

I said to him, I said: When you were four, your father and I had a thought that we should perhaps travel to different waterfalls, that it might be a good thing to see all the waterfalls we could. So, we began to go to waterfalls whenever we had a chance. That year I believe we saw thirty waterfalls, in many places. We developed a routine for it. We would drive there and get out. Your father would pick you up. He would say to you,
Is this the right waterfall?
and you would say,
No, not this one. Not this one
. We went all over. There are really more waterfalls than one thinks. When he talked to me about the project, I said, I don’t know how many waterfalls there are to go to, but I was wrong, there are many. It was just the three of us in the car then, as your sister and brother weren’t born yet. Just the three of us, riding along. We would go down these tiny roads, past fields and rice paddies. We would have to stop to ask directions of the strangest people. But everyone seemed to understand what we were doing. It was never hard to explain it. We are going to see many waterfalls. And the person would say that that was a good thing to do, and that right that way was another waterfall, a very fine one, quite worth seeing. Then we would go on down the road, and pull up at the place. I would get out, I would get you out. You would go
to your father. Then the two of you, the two of you would go to the edge of the water. Your father would cock his ear to listen, and you would imitate him. We didn’t have a camera, so I don’t have any pictures of it. But the two of you would listen to the waterfall for quite a while. Then he would pick you up and he would say,
Son, is this the right waterfall?
and you would say,
No, not this one. Not this one
. Then we would sit and have some food that we had brought. We would look at the waterfall some more and sometimes talk about what was particular about it. Then we would get in the car and go. Your father would never look back at the waterfall as we were leaving, but you would always turn around as best you could and try to look out the window or over the backseat to see it as we drove away. When finally we had been going for months and seen many many waterfalls, we went to one that we had missed, one that was actually rather close to where we lived. It was a rainy day. It had started out pleasant, with blue skies and fine white clouds, but while we were driving there came many gray clouds that were nearly black from the north and west and with them all kinds of rain. Your father did not want to stop. It was very close, this waterfall, he said, and it was a part of the expedition that we would not turn back. So, we got there in the rain and when we did, the rain cleared. We sat in the car for a few minutes and then got out. It was a very small waterfall, one of the smaller ones we had seen. That was probably why no one said anything about it to us when we were trying to find the waterfalls. But when you and your father had listened for a while, and when he lifted you up and he asked you,
Son, is this the right waterfall?
you laughed and laughed. You didn’t say anything, you just laughed
and laughed. And so he said to you again,
Is this the right one? Is this it, the right waterfall?
and you said,
Yes, this is the one we have been looking for
. Then when your sister and brother were born, and we would go on family picnics, we often went there, but we did not talk about our waterfall expedition, and because you had been so young, you never remembered it. You didn’t know why that was the waterfall we always went to, or that you had chosen it from all the waterfalls we had seen. We didn’t know anyway, why it was the right one, your father and I. Or maybe he knows, but I don’t know.

(Mrs. Oda begins to cry. I pass her a handkerchief. She refuses it.)

INT
.

And did he say anything to that?

MRS. ODA

He watched me the whole time, sitting with his back to the wall, he was watching me very closely. His eyes changed while I was watching so I knew that it affected him, and that is why I came back and said it again and again. I felt that it was affecting him, whether he would talk or not.

The guards I spoke to said Oda dealt poorly with being in jail.

Of course, the newspapers were readily available to the guards and so they read about Oda and about what had happened, and were deeply prejudiced against him on account of the confession he had signed, which seemed to reveal his guilt beyond any doubt.

This is a peculiar matter, because the confession should not have been available to the press. Indeed, the actual confession was not. However, it seems that on the evidence of: a. witnesses seeing Oda Sotatsu dragged away from his house, and b. data from an anonymous source supplied to the press, the newspapers gained the knowledge they needed to investigate further, at which point perhaps police officials disclosed information. What happened precisely is unknown. That there were many newspaper accounts linking the Narito Disappearances to Oda Sotatsu via his own signed confession is beyond doubt.